[geeks] Second Life is not a game?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 08:13:59AM +0100, Mark wrote:
> Ergo it's a role playing game. Just because you are trying to be  
> serious about it doesn't stop it being a game. I play EVE Online a  
> lot (although I've been on sabbatical recently) and we take it fairly  
> seriously, have a proper company structure to our corporation etc,  
> but at the end of the day it's still just a game.

The difference is that modern role playing online games allow you to
mix real money with game money and in the original poster's case
create programs which represent objects in the game, for which he
is paid real money.

My middle son plays a lot of a game called MapleStory, which uses a
monetary unit called Mezos. You can earn Mezos via doing things such
as undertaking a quest, solving a puzzle, etc, or you can buy both 
Mezos and objects in the game at various shops.

We don't give him any real money, and he does fine, but other people
want more and different things. Obviously the people who pay real
money for Mezos are what keeps the game alive. 

> Sounds awfully like making and selling stuff in WoW or pretty much  
> any other MMORPG, just a bit less restricted.

Yes, except for the money involved can be real money.

> Our EVE corporation mines minerals and manufactures ships and ship  
> modules. Again, we are more constrained by the rules of the game, but  
> it's the same principle at work.


Not really. You mine virtual minerals, manufacture virtual ships and
get virtual money, but it can never become real money in the real world.
This extends this, sort of like allowing Neo to take home a steak from
the Matrix to eat in Zion. :-)

 

> However you look at it, and however 'unlimited' the environment you  
> are still limited by rules, and borders, and restrictions. Perhaps  
> it's because I find it very hard to take Second Life seriously, but  
> to me that makes it a game. It's a very open minded one but it's  
> still a game. Also in being a jack of all trades as it is it's turned  
> out fairly badly, both appearance-wise and performance-wise.

That's your opinion. Some people like it and use it often. If you ever
saw the movie, "The Thirteenth Floor", you understand, each simulation
was better than the one it created and the inhabitants of each thought
that they were the original.

How many people got lost in the mazes of Adventure (which was just words
on a tty)?


> I make a shit-ton of 'money' out of mining in EVE, but they don't  
> allow credits-for-cash because it damages the integrity of the game.  
> I 'work', hell mining is as dull as dish water 90% of the time (which  
> is why I need a break from time to time). I 'work' for 'money' and  
> buy better equipment and make more 'money'. That sounds like work to  
> me too but it ain't, it's just a game!

But that's the difference, here the money is real. It may make the 
"game" less honest, or less "pure". What it does is add a dimmension of
reality to your virtual life. You can work at your real job, take
real money and spend it in the virtual world. 

It changes the requirments for success from work and expertise in the game 
to real cash, something people obviously want. 

 
> I'm a gamer. I don't play as many as I used to admittedly, but I am  
> still a gamer at heart (mostly I have cut down because the supply of  
> decent PC games has all but dried up in recent years - maybe I should  
> buy a console!). 

I would question that. There are litteraly millions of games out there
that run on a PC. Many of them had crappy graphics and boring game play,
but a lot of them are pretty interesting and still fun if you don't
care about TV quality graphics (we all don't have to live in a Pixar
movie).

If you concentrate on fun and action instead of movie like realisim,
you can get some really good stuff. 

For example. I recently got Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 1 and
3 in discount bins (I can't seem to find 2). They are not really
good, teach you to fly for Al-Quieda level simulators (FS 10 is),
but they teach you the basics and make good combat flight games
if you like those things. 

They both have many add-ons, some free. Someone put the effort into taking
the engine for CFS3 and replacing the aircraft, missions, etc and making it
a Korean War flight simulator. It's a free add on to the game. Quite an
effort and if you get bored fighting Germans with the 20 or so aircraft
MS provides, you can start over again with a whole different world.

You can also download free pilots (which act differently than the
original ones), free aircraft and free missions. If that is your
kind of thing, it could keep you busy for years.

There are ziilions of other games of the same caliber out there, although
my son loves things less complicated and more "grounded" such as Oblivion
(many expansions and fan created things for it), Call of Duty, etc.

There is also America's Army which IMHO is the ultimate combat simulation,
which is designed to teach you what it's really like in the army (thank
you very much, I'm not interested) instead of always killing bad guys
and never getting hurt. Ironicaly, there is a big AA group in Poland,
maybe they are using it to prepare for Putin. :-)

When I was building handheld X86 gaming machines, our signature game
was "Duke Nukem 3D", which was always a hit. Other game such as
Tomb Raider (the original), and the zillion tetris clones, Doom,
Quake, etc worked very well and were a lot of fun. 

Quake and Doom were designed with vector graphics, and open sourced,
so you can get replacement engines that let you play the games with
much better graphics on a newer PC.

> I know it's a big industry (mostly aimed at grabbing  
> lots of money off kids - ain't that cute!) but you have to accept  
> that some people don't really care. 

Our market research showed that the average U.S. family bought 2 new
games a month. That was about $1500 a year just for games. 

We were marketing the ability to play games you already owned for your
PC on a handheld, every parent we talked to loved the idea. :-)

However the big money was going after games that were no longer
marketed, licensing them, packaging them for our device and selling them
online for a $1-$5 each, Sort of like iTunes for games. That would have
brought in well over a billion dollars a year.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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